The Invisible Hand

July 31, 2005

You're the man now, Paul!

July 20, 2005

CBC Spinelessness, Exhibit A

CBC Watch has a discouraging example of the lengths the CBC will go to avoid calling terrorism what it is.

My favourite part was this:

Rather than calling assailants "terrorists," we can refer to them as bombers, hijackers, gunmen (if we're sure no women were in the group), militants, extremists, attackers or some other appropriate noun.

Yeah, we can't risk offending those terroristsinsurgentsmilitants heroic freedom fighters against Western oppression, now can we?

July 17, 2005

More BS from the Globe and Mail

In the race to see who can be the best Liberal Party mouthpiece, the G&M has taken the lead. Saturday's edition treats us to this story, with the headline "Majority want Harper replaced, poll shows." It cites a poll which found that 59% of those surveyed said Stephen Harper should be replaced as the Conservative leader.

Sounds bad for Harper, right? Except that if you're one of the few who reads the whole article instead of just the headline, you'll find that the corresponding number for Paul Martin is 52%.

Hey, Globe and Mail! This means that a majority of people want Martin replaced too, you [expletive deleted]! If you were actually interested in honest reporting instead of fighting the Liberals' battles for them, your headline would have been "Majority want Harper and Martin replaced, poll shows."

This reminds me of a story they did this past February, with the front page headline "Martin gets pre-budget boost." (A modified version of the article can be found here.) Their reason for the headline was that a poll had shown an increase in the percentage who "believe the Liberals deserve to be re-elected." However, tucked away in the middle of the article on page A4 were the numbers on "Who would you vote for?" (y'know, the question that actually matters in an election), which revealed that Liberal support had actually gone down by four percent since the last poll!